AFC Wimbledon - Football Lighting Case Study

About AFC Wimbledon
Wimbledon FC – not to be confused with AFC Wimbledon – played at the Plough Lane stadium for over 80 years. However, in 2001, a consortium of businessmen persuaded them to relocate the club to Milton Keynes – over 60 miles away. After the move they also changed their name to Milton Keynes Dons FC. A large number of fans weren’t happy with this move and decided to launch a new club in Wimbledon and start all over again at the bottom of English football.

AFC Wimbledon was born.

Even though they couldn’t play at Plough Lane any longer and had to share grounds with Kingstonian FC and QPR, the new club’s fans stuck with them. Their loyalty was quickly rewarded. AFC Wimbledon was promoted six times in thirteen seasons – taking them from the ninth tier to the third – League One. They’re also the first club formed in the 21st century to make it into the Football League too.

On November 3rd, 2020, they returned to Wimbledon and hosted their first match at the newly built, Midstream lit, Plough Lane home.

The challenge

For this project, there were two very different types of challenges.

• The first to design and install a world-class, scalable LED floodlighting system for a brand new stadium – less of a challenge and more an exciting opportunity as always in our eyes.
• The second, to get a project of this size completed on time during a global pandemic.

Our Solution

As this was a totally ‘newbuild’ project there were a lot of different companies to collaborate with. The world-renowned architectural company KSS, which has worked on many major sports stadiums globally, was responsible for the overall design and involved us from the very early concept stage. The main contractor was Buckingham Group – who we’ve worked with often before. Front Five Building Services was the M&E contractor for the project.

Together we made an amazing team, and the results speak for themselves.

We designed, manufactured, and installed the whole LED lighting for the project including the installation of two 25m masts. To provide the lighting levels required for League One we used 52 of our proprietary Modus R Series floodlights.

Our in-house lighting design team also future-proofed the whole solution. This will mean that if, or we should say when, the

Wombles get promoted to the Championship League the system can be quickly upgraded to meet the lighting levels needed there too. And of course, as we do with every Midstream project, we delivered it on time, on spec, and on budget.

As to the challenges presented by COVID-19, we’ve got an amazing team of project managers who worked tirelessly to make sure things happened exactly when they should. Working with the entire project team, they kept supply chains open during the harshest periods of lockdown. They scheduled, rescheduled, and rescheduled again the whole programme of works with suppliers and contractors to keep things moving. Most importantly, they helped guarantee that all governmental additional safety measures were in place at every stage of the installation. We applaud them, and everyone they worked with, during this global crisis.

Our Modus R Series benefits at a glance:

A lightweight, extremely versatile product, the Modus R Series has been engineered for both new build and retrofit projects. And it provides low glare, broadcast-ready, flicker-free LED light designed for sports applications.

• The series is manufactured in stainless steel, which improves its structural integrity and product life – a critical need when used across sporting environments.
• Its in-house designed extruded heat sink allows for highly efficient heat dissipation compared with a die-cast product. This keeps lumen degradation to a minimum – helping to extend life and performance.
• It also comes with special light shields to control light spill, reduce glare, and increase uniformity.
• The modular design of the Modus R makes it perfect for versatile, tailored applications and solutions.
• It comes with wired or wireless controls, including DMX, DALI, and 1-19v, to provide the ultimate in lighting control for event light shows and dimming.
• It also offers versatile asymmetric or symmetric distribution, and it delivers up to 150,000 lumens – more than enough to meet the needs of world-class sporting facilities.
• Plus, its integrated 10V surge protection, coupled with a panel mounted Type 2 surge suppressor, guarantee high protection against power surges and a longer product lifetime.